Crime and Punishment

I was inspired to search the archives for this blog, because of what happened in Alabama this week. (explained later) This blog was published about 11 years ago, 16^th February 2013, in fact.

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Like many mortals, I have my weaknesses.  One of them is that I am an inveterate day dreamer. The mind goes wool-gathering whenever I am not busy concentrating on things. What if? Could I?

My wish list is long. Very long.

One of the most compelling desires is to commit a crime. Yes.

Nothing too serious. Something innocuous. Indulging in something that just goes beyond the bounds of lawful behaviour.

I am fully aware that if I am convicted, I will go to jail. But I won’t commit the crime in Canada though. I will go to California. (Not Alabama. Again, to be explained later.) Because the Californians have a civilized system called self-pay. It is more or less like upgrading your flight from tourist to business. You know how you pay a little more and you get to sleep on a seat that stretches into a sort of couch.

 So the judge throws you in the clink, and then you negotiate for souped up accommodation. In essence instead of being cooped up in a small room with iron bars and with cockroaches and mice as co-habitants, you get a clean room with attached bathroom, sheets, blankets, pillows  and such—not quite the Hyatt, but  comfortable.

Of course, you have to pay for this extravagance. At press, the going rate is anywhere between $90 and $200 a day. Janice Burke (not the real name) was booked into one of the jails in Orange County and she paid $120 for a drunken driving conviction. She would later say that the accommodation was clean, safe and most importantly, she did not get harassed by other inmates. (called clients). You are allowed to bring in your iPod and iPad . You can bring your laptop and start work on ‘the book’ that you have always wanted to write.

Or write your blog.

Depending on your crime you might even be granted a furlough. So you go to work, wherever that might be, and return in the evening. Relatives and friends are allowed to bring you hot food every day, if that is your wish.  Otherwise, you share the refectory menu.  I guess I will have to settle for that because I have a suspicion that no-one is going to bring me curry and rice every day.

In Pasadena, I am told, the rooms are full, and there is a waiting list.

Jennifer Steinhauser who reported this first said, “Many of the self-pay jails operate like velvet-roped night clubs of the corrections world. You have to be in the know to even apply for entry, and even if the court approves your sentence there, jail administrators can operate like bouncers, rejecting anyone they wish.”

The typical client is sentenced to a month or two in jail. That is for the kind of crime that I want to commit. There are single night guests, as well as those who stay put for well over a year. Many prisoners, who are charged with nonviolent crimes and typically have no record, are not in the best position to handle themselves to rub shoulders with heavily tattooed giants with bulging biceps. That means me.

Coming back to my own incarceration, I am confident that Hizzoner would look at my very impressive resume and the reference letter from my ex-boss Kofi Annan and acquit me. He would cite temporary insanity.

If not, I would emulate our own Lord Conrad Black and teach the inmates something. Black taught the inmates history. I can teach drama. In fact, I could even start a theatre group and put on shows like “Hope is the Thing with Feathers”, which requires an all-male cast. I don’t think the place is co-ed. At least I would be guaranteed a captive audience. 

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Speaking of Alabama and their correctional facility. Kenneth Eugene Smith was convicted of murdering a woman in 1996, and in November 2022 , the state tried to execute him using lethal injection. But that night, a team of correctional facility workers tried and repeatedly failed to insert an intravenous vein into Smith’s arms and hands and, eventually, a vein near his heart.

Finally, after repeated attempts, prison officials decided that they did not have the time to carry out the execution before the death warrant expired at midnight. So he was sent back to the cell. Where he languished until the 27^th of this month. This time the state used a method known as nitrogen hypoxia. He was fitted a mask and nitrogen gas was administered, effectively depriving him of oxygen until he died. Alabama officials said that the process is effective and humane. But Lee Hedgepath, a reporter who witnessed the execution, said that Mr Smith’s head moved back and forth violently in the minutes after the execution began.

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Artists’ Corner

 What one can do with a painted body! Do watch the short video, the link of which is given below.

Suck

I am sure that I don’t have to explain the title. For the uninitiated though, it means to draw air in to the body by contracting the muscles of the lip and mouth to make a partial vacuum. We all have at one time or the other performed this, be it a pastille or some kind of juice with a straw. Interestingly, suck is also figuratively to mean something disagreeable or disgusting, as in “I love your country, but the weather sucks.” But that usage is not quite relevant to this blog.

So, what is?

As you are aware the Iowa caucuses happened on Monday, and Trump, the self-styled Messiah, exhorted the crowd to ignore the inclement weather conditions and vote. He said, “Even if you are sick as a dog, get out and vote. If you vote and then pass away, it will be okay.” You may draw your own conclusions about how Messiahs are supposed to speak.

But before the caucuses, the journalists, commentators and such were reporting on a special phenomenon. They said the when Trump is in a room, he sucks all the oxygen from the room. Even from a court room.

Baffles me. Of course, he thinks he is the Messiah. For the readers who are not Christians, the Messiah is the promised “anointed one”, or Christ. The Christians believe that Jesus was the Messiah. So, it is only natural to believe that our American Messiah has superhuman powers.

I am, however, perplexed about what happens when Trump sucks all the oxygen from a room. Depending on how long the sucking lasts, it is safe to imagine that all the occupants of the space would die of asphyxiation.

Anyway, Trump is the front runner, but Nikki Haley is an obvious threat. So, he has started focusing on Haley’s Indian heritage. On Wednesday he said, “Anyone listening to Nimrada (this is her first name, misspelled by the way – the correct spelling is Nimarata) Haley’s wacked out speech last night would think that she won the Iowa primary…..” He went on to say that she is ineligible to run for President because her parents were not US citizens at the time of her birth. What a minute – haven’t we heard this line from this guy before? We have! He tried the same thing when Obama was running for President. In what then became known as the ‘birther’ issue, he claimed that Obama was not born in the US. It is absurd that he keeps pulling this tactic out of his pocket. It is more absurd to consider that his followers will get on board with it. Again.

Of course, this all aligns with his view of immigrants. A few days ago, he said that the immigrants are “destroying the blood of our country. Illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They are coming from all over the world.” He forgot, of course, that all three of his wives were immigrants. His father Fred was the son of German immigrants. His mother was a Scottish immigrant. So, it aligns with his view of certain immigrants, then. Which we all already knew. Well, I have to say it. He really sucks.

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When you hear the word ’mosquito’ you associate it with malaria, encephalitis, yellow fever and such. But ‘chikungunya’? No, I did not misspell chicken nor did I refer to the Swahili word ‘gunya’ which means a sack. It is another disease borne by the mosquito. The WHO and the FDA have declared it as an ‘emerging global health threat’. It causes fever and joint pain and can be fatal to newborns and seniors. Statistics from other countries is not available, but in 2023 about 440,000 cases had been reported in the US.. At lease 350 people had died. The good news is that a vaccine, Ixchiq has been developed to treat the disease.

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When you hear the word ‘smuggling’, you would naturally think of gold, precious stones, drugs, tiger bones, rhino horn etc.

But cactus? In Italy more than 1000 of some of the world’s rarest cactuses, valued at over $1.2 million, have been impounded. Pictured below is a cactus which grows in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

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For the sculptor. Yet another unsolicited suggestion. If you are hard up on mediums, use your pencil. As in, sculpt your pencil.

NUMBERS

$195 million. Is a painting worth $195 million? Yes, if it is by Andy Warhol and the subject is Marilyn Monroe. This is the highest ever paid for an American work of art.

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50 million. The number of criminal and civil cases pending, seeking justice in India’s overwhelmed courts. It is estimated that it would take 300 years to clear the backlog.

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No place for mistakes!

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Quotable quotes

When Oscar Wilde visited the US for the first time, the customs officers asked him if he had anything to declare. “Only my genius”, replied Wilde.

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Watch the genius of this young artist below:

Culinary “Art”!

This week’s blog is refreshed from the original 2014 version!

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Typically Asian restaurants had been known as, basically, just a place to eat food. You go into the establishment, order whatever you want from the menu, eat, pay and leave. At least, that had been my experience for many years. I suppose one could say the same thing about most western restaurants too.

In 1966 my colleagues in the school (where I was the principal) and I had to go to Edmonton for the annual convention of the Alberta Teachers Association, and one day, one of the group suggested that we go the Smorgasbord for lunch. I assumed that it was the name of a restaurant. When we walked in, the layout struck me as strange and even after we sat down nobody appeared with a printed menu. Someone came to take the orders for beverages and that was that. I did notice a longish table with a glass roof over it and assorted food was kept in steaming containers. I was anxious not to display my ignorance and so I sat at the table waiting for something to happen. Then one of them said, ‘let us go’ and then I realized that it was up to us to go the table and help ourselves to whatever we wanted to eat. And however much we wanted too!

It is a bewildering experience if you have never been to one of these outfits. Later I learned that ‘smorgasbord’ was a Scandinavian term meaning that food was served on a buffet or cabinet and you helped yourself to the fare.

Smorgasbords became internationally known at the 1939 New York World’s Fair when one was offered at the Swedish pavilion’s Three Crowns Restaurant. The table, in addition to food, had floral arrangements.

Decorating the food and the plate in which it is served is also a western concept. In fact in the fine dining world the way the dish is presented is paid a lot of attention. So much so that sometimes when a dish is served, you feel reluctant to touch it lest you disturb an artistic design! This is more evident in where the artists (yes, culinary artists) display their skill to such an extent that it would appear to be a travesty to disturb a beautifully laid out table. Look at the examples that follow and you will get my drift. The first is a buffet art and the next two are what comes to you on a plate. It is hard to think about digging in but you are in an eatery and not a museum and so you reluctantly deface the salad plate or whatever and dig into it! Although…what is that second plate about, anyway?

Lauren Purnell

All of this artistry does not guarantee, of course, that the food is equally exciting. It could even be as ruse to take your mind away from the quality (or lack thereof) of the food that you are about to consume! I recall eating at Maxims’s—yes, THE Maxims—and ordering Sole meunière and realizing that the fish was uncooked inside!!  And it is a well-known fact that you DO NOT send the food back, because you have no idea what an offended chef would do to get even with you. Sneezing on it is a common form of retaliation, I am told.

But this blog is about the lengths to which a culinary artist would go to present you with something as ordinary as a cup of coffee.

A latte, for instance.

Basically, a latte is coffee with steamed milk. But ‘latte art’ is the latest rage in Japan. Look at this spectacular latte and tell me if you ever will have the heart to drink the product that is in the cup:

And a few more:

It is, indeed, a shame that one has to drink the ‘art work’ only to evacuate it later in the form of malodorous you-know-what!

P.S. “Central” in Lima, Peru won the 2023 ‘Best Restaurant in the World Award’.

Sine Nobilitate

I hope you have ushered in the New Year suitably. What with distractions of one kind or another, I have not been able to compose a blog, and so I am constrained to revisit one that I published on February 8, 2014. I think it is still a good read – I hope you do too!

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A very good friend of mine, a retired senior civil servant in India, appears to be vexed with an unusual problem. These days he believes that he is a snob and so wanted to know if I agree with this characterization or not. I know why he asked me. He knows that I have been in the company of many snobs over the decades, in many countries, and as such, he thought, I would be able to recognize comparable traits in him. However, I could not do any long-distance diagnosis and so I thought I would define a snob and describe snobbish behavior—a kind of check list, which he could use for self-evaluation.

First of all, the origin of the word snob. It is derived from the habit, many years ago, of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges, of writing sine nobilitate (without nobility) or s.n.o.b, next to the names of ordinary students on exam lists and other documents. This was to distinguish them from their stuffy, aristocratic peers.  Over time, popular culture somehow reversed things, and now a snob is defined as “a person who strives to associate with those of higher social status and who behaves condescendingly to others”.

At this point, I want to draw a distinction between ‘posh’ and ‘snobbish’. Posh refers to a person of high class. Actually, it is an acronym for “Port Out, Starboard Home”. During the Raj the Brits travelled to India by boat and the portside (the left side) was cooler than the starboard side.  So the rich and the aristocrats travelled on the portside. Cost more too. But when they returned, they chose cabins on the starboard side for the same reason.

A snob usually excels in name dropping. They would have met or personally known celebrities. The intellectual snob is the person who quotes authors, especially classical writers, as in “Plato said, did he not,………. ”. He would have memorized lines from Tagore or Omar Khayyam or Khalil Gibran. He also knows everything about everything or at least has a strong view on everything.

The theatre snob would have seen the show you are talking about on Broadway or the West End. At the very least, he would be able to quote from the reviews by reputable critics like Ben Brantley or Charles Isherwood. He also would have met or listened to celebrity actors, and more than likely would have a friend in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art–RADA for short. In extreme cases he might even say that he has attended RADA.

The art snob can be recognized when he visits your house by the quick look he gives the pictures on your walls. His body language would suggest that you have poor taste in picking paintings. He might even be tempted to say something like, “I hope you didn’t pay an arm and a leg for this.” It would pain him to say ’painting’.

The snob usually interjects the conversation with “Speaking of….”.  You might be talking about the difficulty of getting a plumber or getting someone to landscape your yard or whatever. He would jump in saying, “Speaking of maintenance issues, I found it extremely difficult to get someone to renovate the kitchen in our condo in Hawaii.” If you counter it with, “John, I did not know you had a condo in Hawaii”, he would give a sad look as if to say, ‘It is not easy being rich’.

The snob is usually late in coming to meetings and parties. This is called ‘being fashionably late’.  He would breeze in, and interrupt the proceedings saying something like, “Sorry for being late. The wretched car would not start. And I paid 86,000 for it, believe it or not.” (We believe you, pal, we do.)  In a group, if a person uses the word ‘astonishing’ instead of ‘unbelievable’ or ’surprising’ you have a snob in your midst.

Hmmm. I just decided to look back at what I have written so far and I realize with a shock that I am actually describing myself—my own linguistic and behavioral habits!

Well, if it is, so be it. The deadline is nigh and I have no time to write on an alternate topic. (Notice I used the word ‘nigh’.)

Before I edit what I have written, I need a shot of Glenfiddich.

A snob drinks only single malt whisky. Of course.

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Well, 2024 has started with a bang (and not a whimper) in the land of wine and roses. Two days ago, a 17 year old student at a small town Iowa high school opened fire before classes started. He killed a sixth grader and wounded several others including the principal. If history is any indication, this is just a start.

But the most revealing news was the unsealing the names of people associated with Jeffrey Epstein, the man who sex trafficked countless teenage girls. I don’t want to dignify the blog with details of his business, but some of his clients astonished me. I can understand Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton. But were Brad Pitt and Stephen Hawking his clients too??!! I know we can’t assume anything yet but…history proves the worst, often.

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Artists’ Corner

Over the months, I have been giving unsolicited suggestions to my sculptor friends. The issue with sculptors is finding the right medium. If you want to sculpt an elephant, you might want to get a few tires.

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And one has to marvel at the following painting by  Soichira Tomioka.(1922-1994).

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Quotable Quotes

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it…… Robert Frost